Horror

0

An epic and graphic tale of antebellum ghosts, ancient scandal, supernatural spies, and a den of iniquity amid the Red Maple and Magnolia trees.

Banjo Strings

A pair of plantation slave ghosts are carrying out a mission of vengeance against the first-born sons of two old and prominent plantation families in Wainwright County, Mississippi. This tightly kept secret is exposed in a letter to "The File Room," a new cable and internet show that investigates and confirms supernatural phenomena. The program is sponsored by the recently exposed organization 'The Campus,' that has monitored and policed the supernatural world for over a century. The show's producer, a descendant of the agency's founder, discovers evidence pointing to a renegade band within the agency, helping keep the families' dark secret. He is forced to "recruit" an old friend, a disgraced former TV reporter, sending him undercover on a "simple reconnaissance mission" to the post-Katrina landscape of Wainwright County. Dodging the local sherrif and the families was one thing, dealing with the unpredictable and deadly ghost Polly was another...

Excerpt
The first two chapters:

"Augustus Wainwright was having an old familiar dream, of when he was thirteen and caught the dark chocolate upstairs maid smoking in his mother's bathroom, her private sanctuary. He'd fancied that gal all summer and now he had her, close enough to touch. His face stretched into a goofy grin, he ordered the maid to his room near the back of the mansion. He bent her over his desk, slid down her panties, undid his pants and just watched, breathing in the faint new aroma, entranced by his first real look at a woman's vagina. The best part of the dream came when she, realizing her position and resigning herself to it, reached back and took matters in hand. He shuddered in anticipation, and then an irritating noise, an itch he couldn't scratch, ice-picked its way in from...where?

He looked up, out through the window, where he expected to see Mother bent over the azealas in the garden, instead, he saw her standing, wearing an old-time plantation ball gown, passionately kissing a shirtless, barefoot black man. The noise scratched itself into a banjo being tuned, then strum. It jarred him awake. He heard a murmur behind him on the bed, sat up and looked over to see Rebecca Sandiford, the girl from last night's party, curled up beside him. Damn, he whispered. She didn't leave when the cops ran everybody off. Downstairs, he heard a banjo being strum. He blinked his eyes, looking over at the clock on the nightstand. 3:02 AM. "He'll come at three in the morning, the day after your birthday." Auntie Aggie's words spilled from his lips, underscored by the banjo..."